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Giant objects, odd monuments and things built for no clear reason.
Belle Fourche, SD
The calculated geographic center of all 50 states lies in a pasture roughly 20 miles north of Belle Fourche and is marked by a small survey marker and flag. The point is on private land; obtain current directions and permission guidance locally and never treat the coordinates as unrestricted access.
Oacoma, SD
An oversized bison stands outside the long-running Al's Oasis travel stop near the Missouri River. It continues the South Dakota tradition of using giant animals as highway landmarks and photo opportunities.
Sioux Falls, SD
A massive stainless-steel arc rises from both banks of the Big Sioux River but deliberately leaves a gap high above the water. The missing section represents the leap required to turn a dream into reality and gives downtown Sioux Falls one of the state's largest modern sculptures.
Rapid City, SD
Visitors drive through large enclosures containing black bears and other North American wildlife before reaching a walk-through area. The concentration of free-roaming bears visible from inside a vehicle makes the attraction one of the Black Hills' stranger roadside experiences.
Custer, SD
A steep city park leads to oversized painted letters and a hilltop overlook above Custer. The hand-built stairways, rock outcrops and giant lettering turn an ordinary municipal hillside into a quirky walkable landmark.
Black Elk Wilderness, SD
A stone fire lookout constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps crowns the highest point east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States. The abandoned lookout is reached only by hiking and feels like a small mountain fortress above the surrounding granite spires.
Rapid City, SD
Guided tours descend through layered limestone chambers filled with stalactites, stalagmites and other cave formations. The caverns were known to Indigenous people before later prospectors entered them during the Black Hills gold rush.
Hill City, SD
Historic steam locomotives haul passenger cars through the Black Hills between Hill City and Keystone. The operating railroad preserves an unusually immersive piece of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century transportation technology rather than displaying it motionless in a museum.
Spearfish, SD
A narrow waterfall drops about 60 feet down the limestone walls of Spearfish Canyon and can be seen from a roadside viewing area. Seasonal water flow and the sheer canyon setting make it one of the most accessible geological stops in the northern Black Hills.
Custer State Park, SD
Clusters of narrow granite pinnacles rise almost vertically above the forest and form one of the Black Hills' most dramatic rock landscapes. A trail from the Needles Highway reaches the base of formations that resemble an enormous natural stone cathedral.
Belle Fourche, SD
A 21-foot granite compass rose celebrates Belle Fourche's claim as the geographic center of the 50 United States. It is a visitor-friendly monument to a point that is actually located miles away on private ranchland.
Rapid City, SD
A full-scale wooden stave church modeled after Norway's medieval Borgund church stands unexpectedly in the Black Hills. Its steep rooflines, carved details and Scandinavian setting make it look transported from another continent.
Rapid City, SD
The Mystery House is deliberately built and staged so visitors appear to stand at impossible angles while balls seem to roll uphill. It is a classic American gravity-hill-style attraction where perspective and construction create the illusion that normal physics has stopped working.
Crazy Horse, SD
An enormous mountain carving of Crazy Horse has been under construction in the Black Hills since 1948. The unfinished sculpture, museums and ongoing work make the site as much a record of a decades-long monumental project as a finished attraction.
Chamberlain, SD
This 50-foot stainless-steel figure overlooks the Missouri River and honors the cultures of the Lakota and Dakota people. Its enormous star quilt changes appearance as diamond-shaped panels move and reflect the surrounding sky.
Rapid City, SD
Huge concrete dinosaurs created as a Works Progress Administration-era tourist attraction stand along a ridge overlooking Rapid City. The intentionally old-fashioned sculptures preserve the way dinosaurs were imagined for roadside visitors in the 1930s.
Kadoka, SD
Old fire trucks stand vertically in a Stonehenge-like circle with an aircraft positioned at the center. The intentionally bizarre installation opened as a modern roadside attraction and even embraces tongue-in-cheek extraterrestrial lore in its official story.
Philip, SD
A six-ton concrete prairie dog towers roughly 12 feet above the Badlands Ranch Store. Built in 1959, it is a surviving example of the oversized animal statues that once competed for the attention of cross-country motorists.
Faith, SD
Sculptor John Lopez assembled this enormous Tyrannosaurus rex from scrap metal in the town near where the famous fossil Sue was discovered. The sculpture turns one of South Dakota's most consequential paleontological stories into a permanent piece of industrial-looking roadside art.
Keystone, SD
Wooden bridges and looping road segments allow Iron Mountain Road to curl back over itself while climbing through the Black Hills. These so-called pigtail bridges are a deliberately theatrical piece of highway engineering designed to make the drive part of the attraction.
Custer, SD
Hundreds of miles of mapped passages make Jewel Cave one of the world's longest known cave systems. Guided routes reveal calcite crystals, narrow passages and an underground scale that is almost impossible to appreciate from the surface.
Lemmon, SD
Sculptor John Lopez turns scrap iron, discarded machinery and other metal into detailed Western animals and figures. His studio gives travelers a chance to see the strange mechanical textures behind sculptures found elsewhere around northwestern South Dakota.
Lemmon, SD
Entire towers, arches, sculptures and structures were assembled from petrified wood, fossils and stone during the 1930s. The result is a city-block-sized landscape that looks somewhere between a geological garden and a fantasy ruin.
Custer State Park, SD
A stone fire tower built by the Civilian Conservation Corps sits atop one of Custer State Park's highest accessible summits. A narrow seasonal road reaches the tower, where the Black Hills spread out in nearly every direction.
